Days 2 and 3
At the beginning of day two we were divided into three groups. Each group was given the assignment of devising a hypothetical proposal for a site specific event, exhibition or project at a designated location in Berlin. We would have to present our proposal at the end of day three.
Adriana Bildaru, Anna Frost and myself were assigned Prinzessinnengarten as our location. Situated on the south-east side of Moritzplatz, Prinzessinnengarten was the site of a Jewish owned department store which was demolished during the second world war. Since 2009 the land has been utilised as a community garden and also containing a kitchen, cafe and library.
Upon visiting the site the first thing we noticed was that the land was at risk of being sold for development by the council. Exploring the gardens and seeing how content people were just by being in there and having somewhere to grow crops told us how important this garden was for the city and its inhabitants. We instantly decided that anything we did here would have to be complementary and respectful to the garden. Key words that came up at that point were sustainable, subservient and integrative.
Each of us were fervent in our desire to bring art into the garden, but in a way that did not detract from Prinzessinnengarten’s overall ethos. We were also conscious that we did not want to get tangled up with the politics of saving the land but that any event were able to propose would aid awareness and bring people to the garden on a regualr basis.
After some deliberation we came to a group decision of bringing in one work of art that would sit permanently in the garden and act as the flagship to attract people there. As this was a hypothetical proposal with an unlimited budget, it was decided that work of art would be Jef Koon’s Puppy. Puppy was actually proposed by Koons to be included in dOCUMENTA 9 but was rejected, so we felt it was nice that the sculpture would now be ‘coming home’ to Germany from its current location at Gugenheim Bilbao.
The second half of our proposal consisted of a quadannual artist residency. Every three months we would invite 3 artists to spend 12 weeks working in the garden producing site-specific works that compliment the atmosphere and the spirit of Prinzessinnengarten.
Along the east wall of the garden are several shipping containers. Two of these containers house the kitchen and cafe, is used as a toilet cabin while others are used simply as storage units. We proposed that we would bring in six more of these containers to act as artist studios. These spaces could also be utilised as projection rooms or as seminar or workshop rooms for the community.
The initial three artists that we proposed to invite to the residency were Haroon Mirza, Laura Buckley and Pablo Bronstein. These artists were chosen based on their style of work and the great potential of seeing their work integrated within the garden was particularly excited.
Laura Buckley is an artist I know from working at Cell Proect Space in London. Her video works and projection installations would provide an interesting new dimension to the garden. The work she produced in collaboration with Haroon Mirza and David MacLean, Stage Fright, was one of the main points of departure for us in choosing what type of artist we wanted to invite to the residency. Pablo Bronstein’s Teatro Alessandro Scarlatti, the worlds smallest opera house was again a work that we felt would alter the dynamics of the garden without being disruptive or disrespectful.
An important part of our project was, whilst integrating art within the garden, to not impose anything or disrupt the balance of Prinzessinnengarten. Therefor, whilst the new cabins provided a kind of community centre alongside the artist studios we also had to replace a garden that was being removed due to the imminent arrival of Puppy. This garden would be relocated to the roof of the six new shipping containers and would remain fully functional.
